My Role

• Position: Staff Software Engineer
• Responsibilities: Front-End Development, UI Engineering, API Integration
• Collaborators: Designers, Editors, Backend Engineers

Summary

I built the "Find Your District" feature on The Post’s House election results page. It allowed users to enter their address and find their congressional district, then instantly view results for their specific race. A responsive interactive map offered an alternate way to click directly into a district.

Problem

Many readers don’t know what district they live in, making it difficult to find relevant election results. We needed to provide a fast, intuitive way to connect people with the information that matters most to them.

Goals

• Help users easily discover their congressional district
• Provide direct navigation to the appropriate results page
• Ensure the interactive county map was responsive and intuitive
• Integrate address-to-district API logic accurately and reliably

Process

This was a last-minute feature request from our newsroom. The weekend before the 2022 midterm elections, I created a lightweight form that accepted free-form addresses and used an external API to resolve them to districts. It then showed the user their district and a clickable link to the correct results page for their district. I also contributed to building a fully responsive, clickable SVG map of U.S. districts that worked across screen sizes and gracefully handled hover/tap interactions. I coordinated with editors to ensure clarity in copy and fallback states.

Design Decisions

• Combined two paths: address entry and map interaction
• Built fallback handling for incomplete or ambiguous address input
• Used seamless animations for a smooth experience
• Ensured the component scaled cleanly on both mobile and desktop layouts

Challenges

One of the main challenges was ensuring the map remained touch-friendly and readable at all breakpoints. We also had to handle imperfect address inputs and integrate with APIs that occasionally returned ambiguous data. I built safeguards and user-friendly error handling for these cases.

Impact

• Widely used by readers during election night and throughout the cycle
• Improved user navigation by reducing confusion around district lookup
• Praised by editors for its clarity and utility

Reflection

This feature reminded me that navigation itself can be a form of storytelling. Helping users find where they belong, geographically and civically, can be just as important as showing the results themselves.